Can we heal people using electricity? Developing fundamental understanding and bioelectronic devices to exploit bioelectricity in bioengineering.

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Bioelectricity is the presence and movement of electrical charges inside living organisms. It plays a critical role in the operation and regulation of life and is responsible for many fascinating natural phenomena. However, it remains one of the least well understood aspects of life. Much of the scientific research has evolved into separate fields. We're familiar with pacemakers that help regulate electrical signals within the heart, but perhaps less aware of the role electric fields play in helping guide cells to heal our wounds or regulate the size of our organs during our fundamental development. In some areas of research, our experiments are comparable to Luigi Galvani's work placing wires in frogs' legs, back in the late 1700s.Joined up thinking about bioelectricity, combining insights from multiple research disciplines is needed, along with better experimental techniques. At the same time, our new tools must be able to contextualise the role of bioelectricity alongside all the other factors that influence living cell and tissue behaviour (for example, external forces and the patterns of different biologically active molecules).This project will establish new methods for developing our understanding of bioelectricity. It will do this by building intricate bioelectronic devices that reflect the complexity of biological and bioengineering problems by incorporating many inputs and measuring many outputs at once. At the same time, it will also provide a network for bringing bioengineers, developmental biologists, biophysicists, and clinicians to further investigate the role of bioelectricity together.